Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Music and place - the neglected dimension

Given its affinity with his perennially popular American Quartet, it is surprising that Dvořák’s String Quintet is not better known. Both the American Quartet and the String Quintet were composed when the composer was staying in the small Czech settlement of Spillville, Ohio, and my header photo shows a mural in the town commemorating his visit. While Dvořák was in Spillville he attended a ritual performance by visiting North American Indians of the Kickapoo tribe. We can only speculate on how the Quintet was influenced by the music of the Kickapoo, who are survivors of a culture described by Andrew Harvey as ‘voices of the first world’. But if that portrayal of an inspired Dvořák in Spillville is accurate, his Quintet was almost certainly the product of what Buddhists call ‘fragrant learning’. This is the assimilation of wisdom by unintentional absorption; just as clothing absorbs the fragrance of temple incense, so humans are affected by the atmosphere of a place from simply being there.

Dvořák’s String Quintet and Septet in delectable performances by the Raphael Ensemble have been reissued on a budget CD by Hyperion - if these works are not in your collection they should be. Header photo credit is Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra blog. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). No review samples were used in the preparation of this post. Also on Facebook and Twitter.

5 comments:

There's a lovely children's book about Dvorak in Spillville, writing of the American Quartet, called Two Scarlet Songbirds; I read it with my young son, who plays violin, in order to introduce him to the Quartet.

One of the problems with geography is what those of us who actually live outside the cities in 'fragrant' places actually experience -- we are from the 'fragrant place', not taking from the 'fragrant place' and depositing it elsewhere as plundered goods. So it is not the dimension that is neglected so much as the composers who exist within that dimension. Even with the Internet (which I've used since 10 years pre-Web), the lack of a city association dismisses our work.

For a while, the internet made somewhat of a difference. Our early (1995-2005) online radio show helped dozens of composers gain visibility ... and keep it because of their early virtual prominence. But as internet geography began to look more like physical geography -- groups in New York or Berlin or London, with publicity organized in the same urban-associated ways -- then that leveling once again tilted toward density.

The one promise that has been delivered, I think, is availability. The hunt for exclusivity and 'nichiness' actually helps classical/nonpop. Most composers today have already been heard far more than Mozart in his own time, and I would guess most of them are actually listened to with interest.

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